An
antomy in art
Ideal
First co-published by Gilroy Publishing and A&C Black Publishers Ltd, 2013 Gilroy Publishing 87-135 Brompton Road Knightsbridge London SW1X 7XL Harrods.com ALL RIGHTS RESERVED No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means without written permission from the publisheers CIP catalogue records for this book are available fromt eh British Library and the Us Library of Congress Every effort has been made to seek permission to reporduce the images in this book. Any ommissions are unintentional. Please contact Harrods Publishing for further details Publisher: Joshua Gilroy Picture Editor: Dalia Nassimi Editorial Assistant: Laura Jordan Copy-Editors: Lisa Hillman, Tim Cumming, Nicolette Thompson Production Manager: Hayley Ellis Harrods Managing Director: Michael Ward Image Director: Mark Briggs
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An Elusive Ideal antomy in art
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CONTENTS
Foreword 6 Polykleitos 8 The Doryphoros Laocoรถn 12 Anatomy in the Renaissance
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Michelangelo 18 Creation of Adam Caravaggio 22 Christ at the Column Bernini 26 David Ingres 30 Grand Odalisque Sargent 34 Lady Agnew of Lochnaw Catalog Checklist
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FOREWORD The visual expression of our world has been an ongoing obsession for mankind—pervasive in most every known culture and era. In that expression of the world nothing has been more important or pervasive as the representation of the human form. This exhibition is designed to illustrate the timeless need and desire to create representations of who we are in some way. Most often, artists are striving for a kind of human perfection. An ideal truth that appeals to our innate sense of aesthetic beauty. Others depict our deepest horrors and fears about who we are and what we can be. Others still depict what they see as honestly and unapologetically as they see fit. The vast majority of the work exhibited and analyzed are celebrations of human virtuosity in the creation of works meant to explore an idealistic and heightened human beauty. What does it mean to idealize the human form or heighten its beauty? Like many enigmatic ideas or opinions that people have attempted to define and set up a structured system for, the cultural idea of human beauty has constantly evolved and modernized, yet we can still look back and say that what was beautiful then remains beautiful today. And perhaps what is beautiful today might be beautiful then. Many artists view this from a more scientific perepective and others avoid the science at all costs. Though, at the end of the day, the very attempt at recreating the image of the human form takes into account anatormy. It may be a deviation or an elevation, but it is an expression of anatomy making an attempt at discovering or revealing some truth about the human form.
FOREWORD
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Image courtesy of Eaton-Houdon
“Polykleitos was concerned with the excellence and beauty that sculpture could attain.” —Warren G. Moon
POLYKLEITOS
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POLYKLEITOS “The perfect human body should be neither too tall nor too short, nor too stout or too thin, but exactly well proportioned”—Polykleitos Polykleitos, along with Phidias, created the Classical Greek style. Although none of his original works survive, literary sources identifying Roman marble copies of his work allow reconstructions to be made. Contrapposto was a posture in his statues in which the weight was placed on one leg, and was a source of his fame.
Polykleitos was of Argos, where he must have received his early training, and a contemporary of Phidias (possibly also taught by Ageladas). His figure of an Amazon for Ephesus was regarded as superior to those by Phidias and Kresilas at the same time[citation needed]; and his colossal gold and ivory statue of Hera which stood in her temple – the Heraion of Argos – was compared with the Zeus by Phidias. He also sculpted a famous bronze male nude known as the Doryphoros (“Spear-carrier”), which survives in the form of numerous Roman marble copies. Further sculptures attributed to Polykleitos[citation needed] are the Discophoros (“Discus-bearer”), Diadumenos (“Youth tying a headband”) and a Hermes at one time placed, according to Pliny, in Lysimachi. Polykleitos’ Astragalizontes (“Boys Playing at Knuckle-bones”) was claimed by the Emperor Titus and set in a place of honour in his atrium.
Polykleitos consciously created a new approach to sculpture; he wrote a treatise (Kanon) and designed a male nude (also known as Kanon) exemplifying his aesthetic theories of the mathematical bases of artistic perfection, which motivated Kenneth Clark to place him among “the great puritans of art”: His Kanon “got its name because it had a precise commensurability (symmetria) of all the parts to one another.” “His general aim was clarity, balance, and completeness; his sole medium of communication the naked body of an athlete, standing poised between movement and repose” Kenneth Clark observed. Though the Kanon may be represented by his Doryphoros, the bronze has not survived, but references to it in other ancient books imply that its main principle was expressed by the Greek words symmetria, the Hippocratic principle of isonomia (“equilibrium”), and rhythmos. “Perfection, he said, comes about little by little (para mikron) through many numbers” By this Polykleitos meant that a statue should be composed of clearly definable parts, all related to one another through a system of ideal mathematical proportions and balance, no doubt expressed in terms of the ratios established by Pythagoras for the perfect intervals of the musical scale: 1:2 (octave), 2:3 (harmonic fifth), and 3:4 (harmonic fourth). The refined detail of Polykleitos’ models for casting executed in clay is revealed in a famous remark repeated in Plutarch’s Moralia, that “the work is hardest when the clay is under the fingernail.”
Doryphoros copy Polykleitos marble, ancient Greece
POLYKLEITOS
The Doryphoros “...perfect visual expression of the Greeks’ search for harmony and beauty...”—Galen Detail The Doryphoros (Greek “Spear-Bearer”; Latinised as Doryphorus) of Polykleitos is one of the best known Greek sculptures of the Classical Era in Western Art, depicting a solidly-built, well-muscled standing athlete, originally bearing a spear balanced on his left shoulder. Rendered somewhat above life-size proportions, the lost bronze original of the work would have been cast circa 440 BCE, but it is today known only from later (mainly Roman period) marble copies. The work nonetheless forms an important early example of both Classical Greek contrapposto and Classical realism; as such, the iconic Doryphoros proved highly influential elsewhere in ancient art. The renowned Greek sculptor Polykleitos designed a sculptural work as a demonstration of his written treatise, entitled the “Kanon” (or Canon, translated as “measure” or “rule”), exemplifying what he considered to be the perfectly harmonious and balanced proportions of the human body in the sculpted form. Sometime in the 2nd century CE, the Greek medical writer Galen wrote about the Doryphoros as the perfect visual expression of the Greeks’ search for harmony and beauty, which is rendered in the perfectly proportioned sculpted male nude. The left hand originally held a long spear; the left shoulder (on which the spear originally rested) is depicted as tensed and therefore slightly raised, with the right arm bent and tensed to maintain the spear’s position. The figure’s left leg pushes off from behind the right foot; the leg bears no weight and the left hip drops, slightly extending the torso on the left side. The figure’s right arm hangs positioned by his side, perhaps held slightly away from the torso for balance, but otherwise bearing no load—the right shoulder is therefore slightly lowered. The figure’s right leg is shown as supporting the body’s weight, therefore tensed, with the right hip raised and the muscles of the right torso shown as contracted. The resulting characteristic of Polykleitos’ Doryphoros is classical contrapposto, most obviously seen in the angled positioning of the pelvis.
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“A work to be preferred to all that the arts of painting and sculpture have produced.” —Pliny
LAOCOÖN
THE HISTORY OF THE LAOCOÖN “...the prototypical icon of human agony.”—Nigel Spivey
The statue of Laocoön and His Sons (Italian: Gruppo del Laocoonte), also called the Laocoön Group, has been one of the most famous ancient sculptures ever since it was excavated in Rome in 1506 and placed on public display in the Vatican, where it remains. Exceptionally, it appears to be identifiable with a statue praised in the highest terms by the main Roman writer on art, Pliny the Elder. The figures are near life-size and the group is a little over 2 m (6 ft 7 in) in height, showing the Trojan priest Laocoön and his sons Antiphantes and Thymbraeus being attacked by sea serpents. The group has been “the prototypical icon of human agony” in Western art, and unlike the agony often depicted in Christian art showing the Passion of Jesus and martyrs, this suffering has no redemptive power or reward. The suffering is shown through the contorted expressions of the faces (Charles Darwin pointed out that Laocoön’s bulging eyebrows are physiologically impossible), which are matched by the struggling bodies, especially that of Laocoön himself, with every part of his body straining. Pliny gives the work to three Greek sculptors from the island of Rhodes: Agesander, Athenodoros and Polydorus, but does not give a date or patron. In style it is “one of the finest examples of the Hellenistic baroque” and certainly in the Greek tradition, but it is not known whether it is an original work or a copy of an earlier sculpture, probably in bronze, or made for a Greek or Roman commission. The view that it is an original work of the 2nd century BC now has few if any supporters, although many still see it as a copy of such a work made in the early Imperial period, probably of a bronze original. Others see it as probably an original work of the later period, continuing to use the Pergamese style of some two centuries earlier. In either case, it was probably commissioned for the home of a wealthy Roman, possibly of the Imperial family. Various dates have been suggested for the statue, ranging from about 200 BC to the 70s AD, though “a Julio-Claudian date [between 27 BC and 68 AD] ... is now preferred”. Although mostly in excellent condition for an excavated sculpture, the group is missing several
parts, and analysis suggests that it was remodelled in ancient times as well as undergoing a number of restorations since it was excavated. The style of the work is agreed to be that of the Hellenistic “Pergamene baroque” which arose in Greek Asia Minor around 200 BC, and whose best known undoubtedly original work is the Pergamon Altar (dated ca 180–160 BC, now Berlin). Here the figure of Alcyoneus is shown in a pose and situation (including serpents) which is very similar to those of Laocoön, though the style is “looser and wilder in its principles” than the altar. The execution of the Laocoön is extremely fine throughout, and the composition very carefully calculated, even though it appears that the group underwent adjustments in ancient times. The two sons are rather small in scale compared to their father, but this adds to the impact of the central figure. The fine white marble used is often thought to be Greek, but has not been identified by analysis. It is generally accepted that this is the same work as is now in the Vatican. It is now very often thought that the three Rhodians were copyists, perhaps of a bronze sculpture from Pergamon, created around 200 BC. It is noteworthy that Pliny does not address this issue explicitly, in a way that suggests “he regards it as an original.”
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Laocön and His Sons Artists of Rhodes Marble, 27 BC–36 AD
LAOCOÖN
Laocoön and His Sons “Laocoon represents a culmination of of an time of great expression and ingenuity”—Peter Weller Detail 1 (top) Pliny’s description of Laocoön as “a work to be preferred to all that the arts of painting and sculpture have produced” has led to a tradition which debates this claim that the sculpture is the greatest of all artworks. Johann Joachim Winkelmann (1717–1768) wrote about the paradox of admiring beauty while seeing a scene of death and failure. The most influential contribution to the debate, Gotthold Ephraim Lessing’s essay Laocoon: An Essay on the Limits of Painting and Poetry, examines the differences between visual and literary art by comparing the sculpture with Virgil’s verse. He argues that the artists could not realistically depict the physical suffering of the victims, as this would be too painful. Instead, they had to express suffering while retaining beauty.
Detail 2 (bottom) The most unusual intervention in the debate, William Blake’s annotated print Laocoön, surrounds the image with graffiti-like commentary in several languages, written in multiple directions. Blake presents the sculpture as a mediocre copy of a lost Israelite original, describing it as “Jehovah & his two Sons Satan & Adam as they were copied from the Cherubim Of Solomons Temple by three Rhodians & applied to Natural Fact or History of Ilium”. This reflects Blake’s theory that the imitation of ancient Greek and Roman art was destructive to the creative imagination, and that Classical sculpture represented a banal naturalism in contrast to Judeo-Christian spiritual art. The central figure of Laocoön served as loose inspiration for the Indian in Horatio Greenough’s The Rescue (1837–1850) which stood before the east facade of the United States Capitol for over 100 years.
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Carmen Bambach
ANATOMY IN THE RENAISSANCE Italian Renaissance artists became anatomists by necessity, as they attempted to refine a more lifelike, sculptural portrayal of the human figure. Indeed, until about 1500–1510, their investigations surpassed much of the knowledge of anatomy that was taught at the universities. Opportunities for direct anatomical dissection were very restricted during the Renaissance. Giorgio Vasari’s Lives of the Artists states that the great Florentine sculptor, painter, and printmaker Antonio Pollaiuolo (1431/32–1498) was the “first master to skin many human bodies in order to investigate the muscles and understand the nude in a more modern way.” Giving credence to Vasari’s claim, Pollaiuolo’s highly influential engraving of the Battle of Naked Men (17.50.99) displays the figures of the nude warriors with nearly flayed musculature, seen in fierce action poses and from various angles.
peeled away or ripped apart forms of muscles, to explore their potential for purely artistic expression (Two Flayed Men and Skeletons, 49.95.181; Anatomical Studies of the Torso and Arms, 1996.75). The majority of artists, however, limited their investigations to the surface of the body—the appearance of its musculature, tendons, and bones as observed through the skin—and recorded such findings in exquisitely detailed studies after the live nude model (Standing Youth, 36.101.1).
To their enormous credit, Italian Renaissance artists also pioneered a consistent vocabulary of anatomical illustration with which new discoveries could be precisely recorded. Until the 1490s, the most authoritative anatomical treatise was still crudely illustrated. This was a compendium entitled the Fasciculus medicinae to which the name of Johannes de Ketham is usually atThe later innovators in the field, Leonardo da tached as author. The Latin edition of “Ketham,” Vinci (1452–1519) and Michelangelo (1475– published in Venice in 1491, includes woodcuts 1564), who are known to have undertaken in a traditional medieval style representing a detailed anatomical dissections at various points “Urine Chart” as well as the main medieval in their long careers, set a new standard in their anatomical figures (the “Blood-Letting Man,” portrayals of the human figure (Studies for the the “Zodiac Man,” the “Gravida” or pregnant Libyan Sibyl, 24.197.2). The patrons commiswoman, the “Wound Man,” and the “Disease sioning art in this period also came to expect Man”). However, an edition of “Ketham” pubsuch anatomical mastery. In the words of the lished in the Italian language almost three years Florentine sculptor Baccio Bandinelli (1488– later (38.52) incorporates a new Renaissance 1560), who was trying to impress a duke to figural style inspired by Giovanni Bellini, Andrea hire him, and who also appears to have run an Mantegna, and Antonio Pollaiuolo. academy for the teaching of young artists, “I will show you that I know how to dissect the brain, Leonardo da Vinci, who is without doubt the most significant artist-anatomist of all time, and also living men, as I have dissected dead first undertook a series of detailed studies of ones to learn my art” (The Academy of Baccio Bandinelli, 17.50.16-35). Circumstantial evidence the human skull in 1489, borrowing from the architect’s rigorous technique of representsuggests that a number of other artists also ing three- dimensional forms in plan, section, attempted direct dissections. Some later great elevation, and perspectival view. He thereby masters produced écorchés, studies of the
ESSAY
invented a new vocabulary for the history of scientific illustration. Leonardo produced his most precisely drawn dissections of the human body in 1510– 11, probably working under the direction of the young professor of anatomy, Marcantonio della Torre, from the University of Pavia. None of Leonardo’s discoveries were published in his lifetime. However, his methods of illustrating the dissection of muscles in layers, as well as some of his “plan, section, and elevation” techniques, seem to have become widely disseminated, and were incorporated in the first comprehensively illustrated Renaissance treatise, Andreas Vesalius’ De humani corporis fabrica, published in Basel in 1543 (53.682). Some of Vesalius’ images of partially dissected bodies, set dramatically in a landscape, appear to have been designed by Titian’s pupil, Jan Steven van Calcar. (1499?–1546)
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“For Michelangelo, anatomy was destiny...” —Howard Hibbard
MICHELANGELO
MICHELANGELO BUONARROTI
prodigious; when the sheer volume of correspondence, sketches, and reminiscences that survive is also taken into account, he is the best-documented artist of the 16th century. Two of his best-known works, the Pietà and David, were sculpted before he turned thirty. Despite his low opinion of painting, Michelangelo also created two of the most influential works in fresco in the history of Western art: the scenes from Genesis on the ceiling and The Last Judgment on the altar wall of the Sistine Chapel in Rome. As an architect, Michelangelo pioneered the Mannerist style at the Laurentian Library. At the age of 74 he succeeded Antonio da Sangallo the Younger as the architect of St. Peter’s Basilica. Michelangelo transformed the plan, the western end being finished to Michelangelo’s design, the dome being completed after his death with some modification. In a demonstration of Michelangelo’s unique standing, he was the first Western artist whose biography was published while he was alive.[2] Two biographies were published of him during his lifetime; one of them, by Giorgio Vasari, proposed that he was the pinnacle of all artistic achievement since the beginning of the Renaissance, a viewpoint that continued to have currency in art history for centuries. Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni (6 March 1475 – 18 February 1564), commonly known as Michelangelo, was an Italian sculptor, painter, architect, poet, and engineer of the High Renaissance who exerted an unparalleled influence on the development of Western art. Despite making few forays beyond the arts, his versatility in the disciplines he took up was of such a high order that he is often considered a contender for the title of the archetypal Renaissance man, along with his fellow Italian Leonardo da Vinci. Michelangelo was considered the greatest living artist in his lifetime, and ever since then he has been held to be one of the greatest artists of all time. A number of his works in painting, sculpture, and architecture rank among the most famous in existence. His output in every field during his long life was
In his lifetime he was also often called Il Divino (“the divine one”). One of the qualities most admired by his contemporaries was his terribilità, a sense of awe-inspiring grandeur, and it was the attempts of subsequent artists to imitate Michelangelo’s impassioned and highly personal style that resulted in Mannerism, the next major movement in Western art after the High Renaissance.
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Creation of Adam Michelangelo fresco, 1511-12
MICHELANGELO
Creation of Adam “It is scarcely possible to put into words the impressions roused by this marvellous painting.”—Morgan Unruh
Detail God is depicted as an elderly white-bearded man wrapped in a swirling cloak while Adam, on the lower left, is completely nude. God’s right arm is outstretched to impart the spark of life from his own finger into that of Adam, whose left arm is extended in a pose mirroring God’s, a reminder that man is created in the image and likeness of God (Gen 1:26). Another point is that Adam’s finger and God’s finger are not touching. It gives the impression that God, the giver of life, is reaching out to Adam who receives it; they are not on “the same level” as would be two humans shaking hands, for instance. Many hypotheses have been formulated regarding the identity and meaning of the figures around God. The person protected by God’s left arm might
be Eve due to the figure’s feminine appearance and gaze towards Adam, but was also suggested to be Virgin Mary, Sophia, the personified human soul, or an angel of feminine build. The Creation of Adam is generally thought to depict the excerpt “God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him” (Gen 1:27). The inspiration for Michelangelo’s treatment of the subject may come from a medieval hymn called Veni Creator Spiritus, which asks the ‘finger of the paternal right hand’ (digitus paternae dexterae) to give the faithful speech. Several hypotheses have been put forward about the meaning of The Creation of Adam’s highly original composition, many of them taking Michelangelo’s well-documented expertise in human anatomy as their starting point.
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“What begins in the work of Caravaggio is modern painting.” —André Berne-Joffroy
CARAVAGGIO
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MICHELANGELO CARAVAGGIO “There can be nothing... better than to follow nature.”—Caravaggio
Caravaggio’s novelty was a radical naturalism that combined close physical observation with a dramatic, even theatrical, use of chiaroscuro. This came to be known as Tenebrism, the shift from light to dark with little intermediate value. He burst upon the Rome art scene in 1600 with the success of his first public commissions, the Martyrdom of Saint Matthew and Calling of Saint Matthew. Thereafter he never lacked commissions or patrons, yet he handled his success poorly. He was jailed on several occasions, vandalized his own apartment, and ultimately had a death warrant issued for him by the Pope.
Michelangelo Merisi or Amerighi da Caravaggio 29 September 1571? – 18 July? 1610) was an Italian artist active in Rome, Naples, Malta, and Sicily between 1592 (1595?) and 1610. His paintings, which combine a realistic observation of the human state, both physical and emotional, with a dramatic use of lighting, had a formative influence on the Baroque school of painting. Caravaggio trained as a painter in Milan under Simone Peterzano who had himself trained under Titian. In his twenties Caravaggio moved to Rome where, during the late 16th and early 17th centuries, many huge new churches and palazzi were being built and paintings were needed to fill them. During the Counter-Reformation, the Roman Catholic Church searched for religious art with which to counter the threat of Protestantism, and for this task the artificial conventions.
An early published notice on him, dating from 1604 and describing his lifestyle three years previously, tells how “after a fortnight’s work he will swagger about for a month or two with a sword at his side and a servant following him, from one ball-court to the next, ever ready to engage in a fight or an argument, so that it is most awkward to get along with him.” In 1606 he killed a young man in a brawl and fled from Rome with a price on his head. He was involved in a brawl in Malta in 1608, and another in Naples in 1609, possibly a deliberate attempt on his life by unidentified enemies. This encounter left him severely injured. A year later, at the age of 38, he died under mysterious circumstances in Porto Ercole, reportedly from a fever while on his way to Rome to receive a pardon. Famous while he lived, Caravaggio was forgotten almost immediately after his death, and it was only in the 20th century that his importance to the development of Western art was rediscovered. Despite this, his influence on the new Baroque style that eventually emerged from the ruins of Mannerism was profound. It can be seen directly or indirectly in the work of Rubens, Jusepe de Ribera, Bernini, and Rembrandt, and artists in the following generation heavily under his influence were called the “Caravaggisti” or “Caravagesques”, as well as Tenebrists or “Tenebrosi” (“shadowists”). Art historian Andre Berne-Joffroy said of him: “What begins in the work of Caravaggio is, quite simply, modern painting.”
Christ at the Column Caravaggio oil paint, 1607
CARAVAGGIO
Christ at the Collumn “This painting embodies the romanticism and harsh times that were going on during this era.”—Danielle Bacon
Detail 1 (left) This is one of two versions of the Flagellation of Christ by Caravaggio painted late in 1606 or early in 1607, soon after his arrival in Naples. The painting shows the flagellation of Christ following his arrest and trial and before his crucifixion. The scene was traditionally depicted in front of a column, possibly alluding to the judgement hall of Pilate. The snubnosed torturer on the far right is recognisably the same figure who modelled as one of the torturers in The Flagellation of Christ, and as the executioner in Salome with the Head of John the Baptist.
Detail 2 (right) The most famous treatment of the theme at the time was Sebastiano del Piombo’s High Renaissance Flagellation of Christ in the church of San Pietro in Montorio in Rome. Piombo’s Flagellation, much imitated by later artists, shows multiple idealised figures twisting through complex layers of space. Caravaggio has flattened the space, reduced the figures to a minimum, and used light to direct attention to the crucial parts of his composition - Christ’s face and torso, the faces of the two torturers, and the hand holding the out-of-frame whip.
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“Bernini is beyond question one of the greatest artists of all time.” —Charles Avery
BERNINI
GIAN LORENZO BERNINI “ ...see beauty when young and accustom oneself to it...”—Bernini
setting in which it would be situated; his ability to synthesise sculpture, painting and architecture into a coherent conceptual and visual whole has been termed by the art historian Irving Lavin the “unity of the visual arts”. A deeply religious man, working in Counter Reformation Rome, Bernini used light as an important metaphorical device in the perception of his religious settings, often using hidden light sources that could intensify the focus of religious worship, or enhance the dramatic moment of a sculptural narrative.
Gian Lorenzo Bernini (also spelled Gianlorenzo or Giovanni Lorenzo) (Naples, 7 December 1598 – Rome, 28 November 1680) was an Italian artist and a prominent architect who worked principally in Rome. He was the leading sculptor of his age, credited with creating the Baroque style of sculpture. In addition, he painted, wrote plays, and designed metalwork and stage sets.
Bernini was also a leading figure in the emergence of Roman Baroque architecture along with his contemporaries, the architect, Francesco Borromini and the painter and architect, Pietro da Cortona. Early in their careers they had all worked at the same time at the Palazzo Barberini, initially under Carlo Maderno and on his death, under Bernini. Later on, however, they were in competition for commissions and fierce rivalries developed, particularly between Bernini and Borromini. Despite the arguably greater architectural inventiveness of Borromini and Cortona, Bernini’s artistic pre-eminence, particularly during the reigns of popes Urban VIII (1623–44) and Alexander VII (1655–65), meant he was able to secure the most important commission in the Rome of his day, St. Peter’s Basilica. His design of the Piazza San Pietro in front of the Basilica is one of his most innovative and successful architectural designs.
During his long career, Bernini received numerous important commissions, many of which were associated with the papacy. At an early age, he came to the attention of the papal nephew, Cardinal Scipione Borghese, and in 1621, at the age of only 23, he was knighted by Pope Gregory XV. Following his accession to the papacy, Urban VIII is reported to Bernini possessed the ability to depict dramatic nar- have said, “Your luck is great to see Cardinal Maffeo ratives with characters showing intense psychological Barberini Pope, Cavaliere; but ours is much greater states, but also organise large-scale sculptural works to have Cavalier Bernini alive in our pontificate.” which convey a magnificent grandeur. His skill in Although he did not fare so well during the reign manipulating marble ensured he was considered a of Innocent X, under Alexander VII, he once again worthy successor of Michelangelo, far outshining regained pre-eminent artistic domination and conother sculptors of his generation, including his rival, tinued to be held in high regard by Clement IX. Alessandro Algardi. His talent extended beyond the confines of his sculpture to consideration of the
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David Bernini Marble, 1623
BERNINI
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David “We hope that this youth will become the Michelangelo of his century.”—Pope Paul V Detail 1 (left) The life-size, representational sculpture can be found in the Galleria Borghese in Rome. The sculpture is fully three-dimensional and is created by carving. Bernini’s use of marble was greatly influenced by his close study of Greek and Roman marble in the Vatican. Cardinal Borghese assisted Bernini in creating the sculpture by holding a mirror up to enable Bernini to fix his work. Bernini was 25 when he started to work on the sculpture. There is a lot of detail in the sculpture from the carved curly locks to the toe nails of its feet. Bernini captured the precise art of David as he appears to be in the very process of slaying Goliath. Line and movement is illustrated by the leaning back of David with sling in hand and an expression of determination on his face.
Detail 2 (right) His eyes are looking intently as if he is trying to capture the exact point of weakness in Goliath. With the turned head of David, we have a sense that Goliath is in the sculpture although he is not. The texture of his skin is smooth and his hair is curly. The color of the sculpture is a skin tone color and lines has created transition from light to dark or shading in the skin. He has muscles which seem to be on every inch of his body. You can tell the strength of him. The armor is in a pile behind him and he is standing over his harp and has a shepherd’s pouch around his neck with rocks in it. The artist has detailed the armor to show the coat of mail and gloves. A sash is draped across his lower body to cover it and to distinguish that David has no armor on.
“Ingres’ pencil pursues ideal grace to the point of monstrosity...” —Paul Valery
INGRES
JEAN-AUGUSTE-DOMINIQUE INGRES “Muscles I know; they are my friends. But I have forgotten their names.”—Ingres
Neoclassicists of his era as embodying the Romantic spirit of his time,while his expressive distortions of form and space make him an important precursor of modern art. Ingres’s style was formed early in life and changed comparatively little. His earliest drawings, such as the Portrait of a Man (3 July 1797, now in the Louvre) already show a suavity of outline and an extraordinary control of the parallel hatchings which model the forms. From the first, his paintings are characterized by a firmness of outline reflecting his often-quoted conviction that “drawing is the probity of art”. He believed colour to be no more than an accessory to drawing, explaining: “Drawing is not just reproducing contours, it is not just the line; drawing is also the expression, the inner form, the composition, the modelling. See what is left after that. Drawing is seven eighths of what makes up painting.”
Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres (29 August 1780 – 14 January 1867) was a French Neoclassical painter. Although he considered himself to be a painter of history in the tradition of Nicolas Poussin and Jacques-Louis David, by the end of his life it was Ingres’s portraits, both painted and drawn, that were recognized as his greatest legacy. A man profoundly respectful of the past, he assumed the role of a guardian of academic orthodoxy against the ascendant Romantic style represented by his nemesis Eugène Delacroix. His exemplars, he once explained, were “the great masters which flourished in that century of glorious memory when Raphael set the eternal and incontestable bounds of the sublime in art ... I am thus a conservator of good doctrine, and not an innovator.” Nevertheless, modern opinion has tended to regard Ingres and the other
He abhorred the visible brushstroke and made no recourse to the shifting effects of colour and light on which the Romantic school depended; he preferred local colours only faintly modelled in light by half tones. “Ce que l’on sait,” he would repeat, “il faut le savoir l’épée à la main.” (“Whatever you know, you must know it with sword in hand.”) Ingres thus left himself without the means of producing the necessary unity of effect when dealing with crowded compositions, such as the Apotheosis of Homer and the Martyrdom of Saint Symphorien. Among Ingres’s historical and mythological paintings, the most satisfactory are usually those depicting one or two figures. In Oedipus, Half-Length Bather, Odalisque, and The Spring, subjects only animated by the consciousness of perfect physical well-being, we find Ingres at his best. Ingres died of pneumonia on 17 January 1867, at the age of eighty-six, having preserved his faculties to the last. He is interred in the Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris with a tomb sculpted by his student Jean-Marie Bonnassieux.
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Grand Odalisque Ingres oil paint, 1814
INGRES
Grand Odalisque “Her gaze reflects a comlpex psychological make-up”—Peter Gibbons
Detail 1 (top) Stemming from the initial criticism the painting received, the figure in Grande Odalisque is thought to be drawn with “two or three vertebrae too many.” Critics at the time believed the elongations to be errors on the part of Ingres, but recent studies show the elongations to have been deliberate distortions. Measurements taken on the proportions of real women showed that Ingres’s figure was drawn with a curvature of the spine and rotation of the pelvis impossible to replicate. It also showed the left arm of the odalisque is shorter than the right. The study concluded that the figure was longer by five instead of two or three vertebrae and that the excess affected the lengths of the pelvis and lower back instead of merely the lumbar region. Detail 2 (Right) Given how the duty of concubines was merely to satisfy the carnal pleasures of the sultan, this elongation of her pelvic area may have been a symbolic distortion by Ingres. While this may represent sensuous feminine beauty, her gaze, on the other hand, has been said to “[reflect] a complex psychological make-up” or “[betray] no feeling”. In addition, the
distance between her gaze and her pelvic region may be a physical representation of the depth of thought and complex emotions of a woman’s thoughts. Ingres instead favored long lines to convey curvature and sensuality, as well as abundant, even light to tone down the volume. Ingres continued to be criticized for his work until the mid-1820s.
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“...the unrivaled recorder of male power and female beauty...” —Robert Hughes
SARGENT
JOHN SINGER SARGENT “A portrait is a picture in which there is just a tiny little something not quite right about the mouth.”—Sargent ized by remarkable technical facility, particularly in his ability to draw with a brush, which in later years inspired admiration as well as criticism for a supposed superficiality. His commissioned works were consistent with the grand manner of portraiture, while his informal studies and landscape paintings displayed a familiarity with Impressionism. In later life Sargent expressed ambivalence about the restrictions of formal portrait work, and devoted much of his energy to mural painting and working en plein air. He lived most of his life in Europe. An attempt to study at the Academy of Florence failed as the school was re-organizing at the time, so after returning to Paris from Florence, Sargent began his art studies with Carolus-Duran. The young French portrait artist, who had a meteoric rise, was noted for his bold technique and modern teaching methods, and his influence would be pivotal to Sargent during the period from 1874 to 1878.
John Singer Sargent ( January 12, 1856 – April 14, 1925) was an American artist, considered the “leading portrait painter of his generation” for his evocations of Edwardian era luxury. During his career, he created roughly 900 oil paintings and more than 2,000 watercolors, as well as countless sketches and charcoal drawings. His oeuvre documents worldwide travel, from Venice to the Tyrol, Corfu, the Middle East, Montana, Maine, and Florida. His parents were American, but he was trained in Paris prior to moving to London. Sargent enjoyed international acclaim as a portrait painter, although not without controversy and some critical reservation; an early submission to the Paris Salon, his “Portrait of Madame X”, was intended to consolidate his position as a society painter, but it resulted in scandal instead. From the beginning his work was character-
In 1874, on the first attempt, Sargent passed the rigorous exam required to gain admission to the École des Beaux-Arts, the premier art school in France. He took drawing classes, which included anatomy and perspective, and gained a silver prize. He also spent much time in self-study, drawing in museums and painting in a studio he shared with James Carroll Beckwith. He became both a valuable friend and Sargent’s primary connection with the American artists abroad. Sargent also took some lessons from Léon Bonnat. Memorial exhibitions of Sargent’s work were held in Boston in 1925, and at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and the Royal Academy and Tate Gallery in London in 1926.[86] The Grand Central Art Galleries also organized a posthumous exhibition in 1928 of previously unseen sketches and drawings from throughout his career.
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Lady Agnew of Lochnaw John Singer Sargent oil paint, 1892
SARGENT
Lady Agnew of Lochnaw “A masterpiece... not only a triumph of technique but the finest example of portraiture”—The Times
Detail Lady Agnew’s personality engages in endless elusive play against her social type. Sargent has made her face almost schematic, yet within the regularity there is slight departures, nuances whose faintness blends nicely with the sitters languid pose. Lady Agnew’s face seems all possibility, and consciously so. The moment of the right side of her lips look slightly drawn back, as if in doubt or weariness, the left side seems almost to smile. And, as if to insist on her control of this ambivalence, her eyes are oddly calm.
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Catalog Checklist
8
The Doryphoros Polykleitos
14
Laocoรถn and His Sons Artists of Rhodes
18
Creation of Adam Michelangelo
22
Christ at the Column Caravaggio
39
26
David Bernini
30
Grand Odalisque Ingres
36
Lady Agnew of Lochnaw Sargent
41